What order should I be writing my name (i.e. first name and last) while living in Japan?

Question:

While I was studying Japanese and school, we were always taught to write our names, last and then first (e.g. スミス　ジェームズ).
However, now that I'm working in a school here, it seems coworkers prefer calling me ジェームズ・スミス? I was even told to introduce myself in that manner.

I know the latter seems more foreign, but I was just wondering which way would be the easiest for Japanese people, such as when signing up for some sort of membership card, etc. What do you think?

Answer:

You do not need to call or write your name in Japanese way.

All the Japanese know that in your culture, your given name comes before your family name. If you introduce yourself by calling your family name first, it would sound very strange even to us Japanese.
As you said, we never call your full name in Japanese way. This rule can be applied to your writing in Japanese. In your case, ジェームズ・スミス is correct.

You might have a question "despite the fact that the Chinese call and write their family names first in both Chinese and English (so do the Koreans), why only Japanese do it reverse way in English?" Actually someone posted a similar question 3 years ago. To this Q, my answer was (just for your reference if you were interested):
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?…